Eight people are dead and at least 11 injured after a man in a rented pickup truck drove down a popular bike path in Lower Manhattan Tuesday, hitting several pedestrians and a school bus before being shot by police, officials said. The incident is being treated as an act of terror.
“Based on the information we have at this moment, this was an act of terror. And a particularly cowardly act of terror,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a press conference two hours after the attack. “We know that this action was intended to break our spirit.”
At 3:05 P.M, the 29-year-old suspect, who authorities declined to publicly identify, entered the West Side highway in a rented Home Depot pickup truck, and began striking pedestrians as he drove south down the road, NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neil said at the press conference. The truck subsequently collided with a school bus near Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan, injuring two adults and two children, and the driver emerged from the vehicle with two guns, which authorities later identified as paintball and pellet guns. A a law enforcement officer shot the suspect, and he was transported to a hospital after sustaining a gunshot wound.
An investigation is underway, although New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he believed the suspect acted alone and is not part of a wider plot. A law enforcement official told the Associated Press the suspect shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he exited the truck.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident the area surrounding Chambers Street was largely blocked off and heavily guarded by law enforcement, although parents who needed to pick their children up from school were allowed to enter the closed off vicinities. The incident ended right by Stuyvesant High School, one of the city’s most prestigious specialized schools. “This incident is over,” said O’Neill. “It did end right by Stuyvesant High School so we had to make sure all the kids were taken care of, and we held them in place for a while.”
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Another mom who rushed to Stuyvesant to find her child told TIME she had witnesses the suspect crash into the school bus. “I saw there was a car crash into a school bus and then i saw a…man come out of his car circling around the west side highway and chambers, circling with the [paintball and pellet guns] in his hands.”
The White House said President Trump has been briefed on the incident by his Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, and will continue to be updated as more details are provided. Trump also took to Twitter, calling the suspect “a very sick and deranged person.” “Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.!” he wrote.
A little over an hour later, Trump followed up with another tweet, this time about the need to stop ISIS, even though no connection has been established between the attack and the terrorist group.
“We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!” he tweeted.
With reporting by Karl Vick.